Futile Devices Scans

“Ever since you came to Bihan City, you’ve spent no small amount of time drinking and fooling around with those two resident envoys from Qiyun…”

“When did I ever!”

Young Master Wei, who had not changed expression even after nearly being poisoned to death, immediately showed it on his face. As though he had suffered a heaven-shaking injustice, he sprawled beside Yu Gong Zhao Ye’s ear and cried with immense grievance, “Aren’t I busy every day having a secret affair with Your Highness?”

“Before we got together, you often used official socializing as an excuse to go out drinking with your disreputable friends.” Yu Gong Zhao Ye rigorously corrected his wording. “And you didn’t even know to avoid people. For a while, I thought you and Yuan Tian Jing had met too late in life and were planning to swear brotherhood as men of different surnames.”

The great big Wei Fu flopped onto his shoulder with a slap and whimpered pitifully, “When did I ever…”

“You look as if you can get along with anyone, but in truth, you aren’t that warm toward ordinary people. Every time you take the initiative to do something, it means you’re setting a trap. So what exactly did Yuan Tian Jing do to deserve your special favor?”

Yu Gong Zhao Ye tenderly touched his face. His movements were gentle, but his tone was blunt and utterly merciless. “It was only after finding out the true mastermind today that I finally understood. This was also something you planned from the very beginning.”

“……”

Wei Fu let out two dry “hahas”. Even he felt guilty hearing them, and he argued stiffly, “Lord Yuan is warm and hospitable and often invites me to drink. I was just too embarrassed to refuse him…”

“Whether you took the initiative to make overtures to him or merely went with the flow, in any case, the situation presented to others was that you and Yuan Tian Jing were on extremely harmonious terms.”

Even while sitting in Wei Fu’s arms in such a cramped, pressed-together posture, His Highness still insisted on keeping his expression unchanged and speaking of serious matters with perfect calm. “One of you is Xiling’s regent minister. The other is Qiyun’s resident envoy. When the two of you get together, what could you possibly be discussing? It wouldn’t be how to carve up Longsha, would it?”

Before Wei Fu could explode, Yu Gong Zhao Ye added in time, “Of course, I would not suspect you like that. But the king does not understand you. If he were a mediocre and cowardly ruler, that would be one thing. But so long as he has any intent at all, how could he not be wary of you?”

Seeing that there was no escaping this time, Wei Fu deceived himself by burying his face in the hollow of Yu Gong Zhao Ye’s shoulder and whined softly, “I only wanted to test him a little…”

“Your nerve is truly not ordinary, Wei Shuchen.” Yu Gong Zhao Ye said coldly, “Your way of testing someone is to hand the other side a knife directly and see whether he’ll find a chance to kill you.”

“……”

Being called by his full name made Wei Fu want very much to flatten himself into a strip against the wall. He hurriedly wagged his tail at Yu Gong Zhao Ye and acted obedient. “The king knows where the line is. He wouldn’t really do anything to me. Besides, isn’t Your Highness still here? You’ll definitely protect me, right?”

These words were practically a knife stabbing straight into Yu Gong Zhao Ye’s heart. He had once believed Bihan City to be the safest place. Under Yeguang’s very eyes, no one would dare make a move against Wei Fu. Yet a hundred precautions could still miss one flaw, and reality had given him a resounding slap across the face—when the accident happened, he just so happened not to be by Wei Fu’s side.

His Highness rarely gave a bitter laugh, but because the laugh was far too cold, it frightened Wei Fu into wagging his tail even more diligently. “I wasn’t trying to act recklessly… A subject is supposed to understand his ruler’s wishes and actively help share his burdens. The king doesn’t want to be controlled by others, so he needed some excuse to make trouble for Qiyun. I count as having taken the initiative to pledge myself…” He muttered softly, “Otherwise, how am I supposed to stand in the same boat as Longsha?”

Yu Gong Lie would not allow Noble Consort Qi to become queen, and he also could not possibly feel at ease letting Wei Fu monopolize the reins of government. Therefore, the safest way for the chief minister to survive was to tuck his tail between his legs, behave himself, and, once the three-year term was over, immediately pack up and get out, just as Yu Gong Zhao Ye had warned him in the carriage back then.

But if Wei Fu was not satisfied with merely passing his days in peace and still wanted to do something, then he had to break apart this current situation in which everyone smiled and pretended harmony. Whether by interests or by leverage, no matter what he used to pry it open, in the end, he had to place himself into the game and personally stand upon this battlefield.

“You are Xiling’s Assistant Chancellor.” Yu Gong Zhao Ye was nearly being stabbed into a sieve by every sentence Wei Fu said, and there was even a trace of weakness in his voice that was difficult to detect. “Is there any need for you to scheme this far on behalf of Longsha’s ruler?”

Wei Fu lifted his brows in confusion. “Ah?”

The answer was so natural and self-evident that it did not even need to be spoken aloud. It was already fully revealed in his gaze—

But Longsha is your homeland, Your Highness.

The two of them silently looked at each other for several breaths. At last, Yu Gong Zhao Ye could bear it no longer and pressed the back of Wei Fu’s head. The veins on the back of his hand bulged as he abruptly exerted force, tilted his face up, and kissed him.

He finally understood what Wei Fu had meant by “abandoning” on the night he had bared his heart in the old residence in Fengdu.

At that time, Yu Gong Zhao Ye had still been calculating every last bit of their identities and positions, weighing the separation that was destined to arrive three years later, and pitying the moth that flew into the flame while believing himself clear-headed. Yet Xiao Guan had already risked his life for him.

A faint, indescribable sense of relief even rose in Yu Gong Zhao Ye’s heart: fortunately, the dowry wine had been strong enough to go to his head, letting him agree to Wei Fu on a moment’s impulse and preventing so-called “reason” from gaining the upper hand. Otherwise, right now, he might have regretted it until his intestines turned green, and he would have had to drag Fang Ji Chuan back overnight and kill him just to make up for it slightly.

Otherwise… how heartbroken would his Xiao Guan have been?

“Mm…”

A sigh-like laugh spilled from his throat. At first, Wei Fu was stunned for a moment by Yu Gong Zhao Ye’s rare initiative, but in the next instant, his heart blossomed with joy and he counterattacked, tasting sweetness and then clinging to him, refusing to let him escape.

Yu Gong Zhao Ye was chased and bitten for a long while by the sharp-toothed fox spirit. His waist and back kept arching backward, gradually bending into a supple bow. In the end, the two of them, kissed senseless and dizzy, finally lost their balance and fell together into a pile of round, bulging cushions.

“Not angry anymore?”

The two of them were intimately hidden away in a cramped corner where even the lamplight could not clearly reach. Wei Fu contentedly wrapped Yu Gong Zhao Ye’s entire body tightly in his arms and was still pecking him now and then, kissing from his fluttering long lashes down to lips that had taken on a vivid, brilliant color. That undisguised, pure fondness was enough to soak soft the hardest heart in the world, and besides, Yu Gong Zhao Ye had not resisted very much to begin with.

“It’s not anger…”

“No, that’s not right. I am still angry.” He lifted his head slightly to reach Wei Fu’s lips, touching briefly before parting, then sighed softly with lingering fear. “In the future, never do this kind of thing again. Longsha has internal troubles and external threats everywhere you grab, and if all else fails, there is still me. We can always think of a way. How many lives do you have to throw into it?”

Wei Fu seemed to have been coaxed into an excellent mood. He looked at Yu Gong Zhao Ye with rare curiosity, his eyes actually sparkling. “I thought that once you knew the king wasn’t only busy combing his hair and dressing himself every day, but was actually working hard in secret to strengthen himself, you would feel very gratified.”

“You nearly lost your life. The fact that I’m not going to jump into the sea is already good enough. How am I supposed to feel gratified?” Yu Gong Zhao Ye was so worried he kept sighing. “Also, the king merely likes adorning his appearance. He isn’t dressing himself up in extravagant luxury. In his conduct and handling of affairs, he is still quite steady, so there is no need to be overly worried about that.”

Xiling’s Fengdu was far more conservative and solemn than Longsha, and after staying here for half a year, Wei Fu had truly had his eyes opened. The chief minister worked in the Eastern Pavilion, and every afternoon, they would set aside a short spell of leisure to drink tea, eat snacks, and chat about strange anecdotes from the various yamen. Some of those stories were not even suitable for an unmarried young man like Wei Fu to hear. They also put on the air of people who had been through it all every day, advising him not to bury his good looks, to dress up more while he was still young and wear brighter colors, or else once he passed twenty-five, he would have to rely on powder to maintain a fair complexion.

They described Wei Fu as though he were a tender little wild cabbage grown freely in the fields, and if one did not hurry up and eat him, he would grow old. Originally, he had not taken it too seriously, but after hearing Yu Gong Zhao Ye say this, he suddenly grew a little nervous and asked carefully, “So Your Highness thinks it would still be better to dress up a little in moderation?”

Yu Gong Zhao Ye thought, What does that have to do with anything? With this donkey-lip-to-horse-mouth way of thinking, is Longsha really going to be fine in your hands? At the same time, he lifted his eyes and looked Wei Fu up and down, then tapped the center of his brow with a fingertip and said casually, “I don’t have any particular preference. If I had to say, I like you like this.”

In a daze, he saw a huge cluster of little pink flowers suddenly bloom behind Wei Fu. Immediately afterward, he was pressed down onto the couch by the delighted fox spirit and kissed several times in succession. There was not even much desire in it. Wei Fu simply liked him so much he did not know what to do with himself, so he wanted to press close to him and nuzzle endlessly.

“Your Highness is so…”

He leaned intimately beside Yu Gong Zhao Ye’s white, faintly pink ear, seeming as though he wanted to say something, but in the end, he merely laughed softly.

“So what?”

Yu Gong Zhao Ye’s pale amber eyes seemed to be steeped in a clear spring where peach blossoms floated. They narrowed halfway in comfort, and his double eyelids and the tails of his eyes joined into an extraordinarily gorgeous curling arc. Because he was lying down and his collar had fallen open, the small mole on his neck appeared in Wei Fu’s field of vision, rising and falling slightly with his breathing.

Because that entire stretch of skin was so white, that one spot instead became extremely eye-catching, as though it were brightly telling others, Bite here.

Wei Fu did not know how to describe Yu Gong Zhao Ye’s current state. It seemed a little different from usual, yet the difference was extremely subtle, as though… he had suddenly awakened to desire.

It was not to say that he had been oblivious before, because Yu Gong Zhao Ye had always been accustomed to restraining his emotions. Although he always looked indifferent and not very approachable, and rarely took the initiative, he was actually exceptionally indulgent toward Wei Fu, yielding to him in everything.

But whether it was tolerance or pampering, both were a kind of bestowal from above. One who wanted nothing was invulnerable. He was willing to accompany Wei Fu in making trouble and jump into the river with him to become soaked together, but he would not completely sink into it.

Wei Fu was very patient. In any case, he intended to soak in this river for the rest of his life. One day, he would surely soak the stone soft and make the wood blossom. But that day seemed to have come a little too quickly. He had never seen what it looked like when wood bloomed, and for a moment, he was dazzled into a daze, a little stunned.

The silver-tongued Chancellor Wei suddenly ran out of words. After struggling for a long while, he said softly, a little embarrassed, “Your Highness is so good today…”

Did this count as good?

Was he usually too harsh on Wei Fu?

An indescribable feeling rose in Yu Gong Zhao Ye’s heart. He touched Wei Fu’s face. “Don’t change the subject. Did you remember what I said just now? No matter what happens in the future, protect yourself first. Absolutely do not trade your life for anything.”

“I know.” Wei Fu laughed and lowered his head to kiss him. “I’ll be careful and won’t make Your Highness worry…”

This foolish child still did not understand.

Yu Gong Zhao Ye simply clasped his hand and pressed it over Wei Fu’s own heart, letting that heartbeat thump against his palm, and said directly, “My heartache is worthless, Xiao Guan.”

“No matter how pleasant the pretty words may sound, when pain falls on your body, I cannot share even the tiniest bit of it for you.”

“The most important thing is you. That is why I want you to cherish yourself. Not for your father and mother, not for your king or your brothers, and not for me either. Only for yourself.”

“Love yourself a little more. Just take it as loving me. All right?”

With Yu Gong Zhao Ye’s personality, these words were enough to count as “laying his heart and lungs bare.” An assassin who had spent years licking blood from the edge of a blade was bitterly begging a sheltered civil official who had never been touched by wind or rain to treasure his own life. It was simply heaven and earth turned upside down.

But these words unexpectedly felt familiar.

Because that year when he was fifteen had been carved too deeply into his bones, and Wei Fu’s memory was excellent. Thus his thoughts flew back in an instant to that pitch-black underground place where no daylight could be seen. At the edge of life and death, the young assassin he had met by chance had also clutched him like this, hoarsely and desperately stopping him from jumping off the cliff.

Perhaps every plea Yu Gong Zhao Ye had ever made in this life had been used on Wei Fu.

“…”

Once the frightening outer layer of feathers was peeled away, hidden inside was still the Xiao Guan who had made no progress after all these years. Wei Fu completely turned back into a mute, burying his face evasively into Yu Gong Zhao Ye’s warm neck and making a sound that was half like crying and half like laughing.

Yu Gong Zhao Ye, on the contrary, relaxed. He reached out to hold Wei Fu’s trembling back, soothingly stroked his fur, then turned his head and dropped a light kiss onto his raven-black hair. “Will you obediently listen?”

From the hollow of his neck came a tearful “Mm.”

Yu Gong Zhao Ye laughed softly.

“Then come here.”

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